vintage NAAFI postcard arrives!

Yesterday (21st November), a vintage NAAFI postcard arrived for one of the Trust’s displays at Roman Circus House. We bought it online! It is of a sepia photograph of the NAAFI club at Southampton. The postcard was never used and so it is undated. However, we think that it dates to WW2 because of one of the printed inscriptions on the reverse, which reads ‘ ” This is a time for everyone to stand together, and hold firm!” – The Prime Minister.’ The other inscriptions read ‘POST CARD’ and ‘Published for N.A.A.F.I. / by The Photochrom Co. Ltd., London and Tunbridge Wells’.

Our building – Roman Circus House – was, of course, built in 1937 as the Regimental Institute of the Artillery (Le Cateau) Barracks in Colchester garrison. It housed the barracks NAAFI. The ‘NAAFI’ (Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes) is an organisation which provides catering, social and retail facilities to the British Services. Our NAAFI was an ‘institute’, while our vintage postcard is of the NAAFI ‘club’ at Southampton, but we wanted to include it in our small NAAFI display within the Roman circus centre. It is both informative and very evocative.

The postcard is a multiview of the Southampton NAAFI club, and it shows the lounge, restaurant, games room, reading-writing room and the theatre-ballroom. Our NAAFI institute provided two separate sets of facilities, one for the men and one for the corporals, and we think that these consisted of a restaurant and games room for each, plus a reading-writing room for the men. The Southampton NAAFI club’s ‘theatre-ballroom’ included a stage, as does our men’s restaurant. We have seen examples of postcards for other NAAFI clubs, ie Darlington, Newcastle, Lincoln, Sleaford, Plymouth, Brussels, Hamburg, and Rome! There were many other NAAFI clubs in the UK and around the world, including Norwich, Nottingham, Leeds and Manchester, one in Naples and, we think, others in Cairo and Hong Kong.

When you visit the Roman circus centre, you will be able to enjoy our displays on the circus and also our NAAFI display, including a selection of artefacts and our ‘new’ vintage NAAFI postcard. As you walk round the circus centre, you are walking in the footsteps of all the men who used the NAAFI and of the women who worked here: in the men’s restaurant with its small stage, in the corporals’ restaurant, in the servery and in the NAAFI kitchen. We are re-opening the circus centre in March 2015, and we look forward to seeing you!

The image shows the postcard.

.